It Turns Out that LAHSA is Statistically Challenged When it Comes to Counting the Homeless, Not Just LAHSA Commissioner Kerry Morrison. Even Eric Garcetti, LA’s Technocrat, Can’t Count
Tag Archives: Statistics
Hollywood BID Patrol Arrest Rate Continues to Plummet in 2016: by Week 12 there were 23% Fewer Arrests than in 2015 and more than 50% Fewer than in 2014
Recall that in 2015 the BID Patrol arrested 606 people, so this projected figure represents a projected 7% decrease from last year’s already strikingly attenuated figures.
Furthermore, by week 12 of 2015 the BID Patrol had arrested 169 people, compared to only 130 this year. This represents a stunning 23% reduction from 2015’s level. For the sake of comparison, note that by week 12 of 2014 the BID Patrol had already arrested 261 people. Thus 2016’s week 12 total is less than half of the 2014 figure from the same week.
Read on for a little bit of editorial speculation.
Continue reading Hollywood BID Patrol Arrest Rate Continues to Plummet in 2016: by Week 12 there were 23% Fewer Arrests than in 2015 and more than 50% Fewer than in 2014
In 2013 The Andrews International BID Patrol Arrested Homeless People at More than 57 Times the Rate that the LAPD Did and were Responsible for 1 in 14 Homeless Arrests in Entire City of Los Angeles
In 20133 the BID Patrol arrested homeless people at more than 57 times the rate that the LAPD did. Furthermore, they were responsible for more than 1% of all arrests made in the entire City of Los Angeles that year even while working only 0.13% of the hours that the LAPD did. Approximately one in fourteen arrests of homeless people in the entire city of Los Angeles that year was made by the BID Patrol.
Here’s how I calculated these figures: That year the LAPD made 14,838 arrests of homeless people4 whereas the Andrews International BID Patrol made 1,096 arrests.5 Reading through A/I’s 2013 arrest reports and examining A/I’s 2013 arrest photos I see no reason to believe that the BID Patrol arrested non-homeless people in 2013 in any significant number.6 Continue reading In 2013 The Andrews International BID Patrol Arrested Homeless People at More than 57 Times the Rate that the LAPD Did and were Responsible for 1 in 14 Homeless Arrests in Entire City of Los Angeles
Final Figures for 2015 Show that Arrest Rate Reduction Even Higher than Estimated: 42.7% Drop From 2014 Total, Which is 4.18 Standard Deviations from the 2009-2014 Mean
Continue reading Final Figures for 2015 Show that Arrest Rate Reduction Even Higher than Estimated: 42.7% Drop From 2014 Total, Which is 4.18 Standard Deviations from the 2009-2014 Mean
BID Patrol Prosecution/Arrest Ratio Very Low as Shown by Top Arrestees 2007-2013: From 44 Frequently Arrested People with 1144 Arrests, 407 Brought to City Attorney, Only 185 Actually Prosecuted
This is an astonishingly low rate if one thinks that the purpose of arresting people is to stop them from breaking the law, and it’s harmful both to the people arrested and to society at large. The incomparable Alexandra Napatoff, writing about misdemeanor convictions (although her argument is as strong regarding the arrests themselves, and even more so if the conviction rate is so very low), puts it like this;
Because the misdemeanor world is so large, its cultural disregard for evidence and innocence has pervasive ripple effects, not the least of which is the cynical lesson in civics that it teaches millions of Americans every year. In these ways, the misdemeanor process has become an influential gateway, sweeping up innocent as well as guilty on a massive scale and fundamentally shaping not only the ways we produce criminal convictions but also who is likely to sustain them.
Continue reading BID Patrol Prosecution/Arrest Ratio Very Low as Shown by Top Arrestees 2007-2013: From 44 Frequently Arrested People with 1144 Arrests, 407 Brought to City Attorney, Only 185 Actually Prosecuted
37% Reduction in BID Patrol Arrests from 2014 to 2015 Almost Certainly Due to Our Scrutiny
Following six years of essentially level arrest rates (1184 per year on average) between 2009 and 2014 inclusive, as of November 2015 the Andrews International BID Patrol was on track to make only 665 arrests in Hollywood last year.14 This represents a 36.99% drop, which is exceedingly unlikely to be due to chance.15 Long-time readers of this blog will recall that in December 2014 we discovered that on October 10, 2014, the very day after my first visit to a BID meeting of any kind, Steve Seyler wrote to Kerry Morrison, stating:
Continue reading 37% Reduction in BID Patrol Arrests from 2014 to 2015 Almost Certainly Due to Our Scrutiny
Kerry Morrison: I’m Not a Social Scientist, but I Play One on the Imaginary Television in my Head. Also, HPOA’s Own Survey finds that Hollywood Homeless Drink Significantly Less than General US Population!
Anyway, as usual, we’re going to mock this nonsense one piece at a time, with Kerry’s words in blue. The links are Kerry’s.
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them — Ding-dong, bell.
We’ll give her the first sentence. It’s even possible that it’s true that complaints about homeless people have dominated her attention. We’ll even give her the tacit condescension of a link to Wiktionary paired with the awkward little “of sorts” surrounding Ariel’s beautiful and much abused notion of a sea change. But pay close attention to her claim that what we are seeing does not resemble the face of homelessness five or ten years ago. Surely we’re going to see some evidence for this!
Continue reading Kerry Morrison: I’m Not a Social Scientist, but I Play One on the Imaginary Television in my Head. Also, HPOA’s Own Survey finds that Hollywood Homeless Drink Significantly Less than General US Population!